How to quickly defrost minced meat: useful tips

It often happens that guests can suddenly come on, or you, having forgotten, didn’t take out the mince in time to prepare dinner for the family, and there is very little time left until one of these events. If so, now you have in your hands a large piece of frozen minced meat, which will independently thaw for two to three hours. But we remember that time is not infinite, and guests and / or the family need to be fed.

What to do in this case? It is not possible to wait until the meat thaws itself. Therefore, you need to resort to methods of quick defrosting of the product, which at the same time will not spoil it.

Available options

There are several ways to help defrost minced meat quickly and not turn it into a liquid, tasteless mass, from which it will be useless to cook anything.

1. The fastest and most effective way to defrost: a microwave. Modern technologies allow a person not only to heat food in it, but also to cook, as well as defrost foods. If your oven has the “Quick Defrost” mode, then you should remove the minced meat from the bag, put it in a special (usually ceramic) dish and put it in the microwave for the indicated mode. However, you should not relax: be sure to follow the process, do not overheat the stuffing, otherwise it may burn out or even deteriorate.
2. For lack of a microwave, you can use the water bath. To do this, remove the stuffing from the packaging, place it in a ceramic dish. Pour water into a saucepan and place it on a slow fire. Place the container with minced meat over the water (the edge of the vessel should lie on the edge of the pan, so choose the diameter correctly). Control the process by constantly turning the meat and removing already thawed layers from it.
3. A rather crude but effective way for those who do not want to heat the minced meat, being afraid to overexpose it and spoil it: divide it into small pieces and add salt. In this case, the meat product is chopped into pieces with a large sharp knife or ax and salted. Salt “corrodes” the ice, and in twenty minutes the mince can be used for cooking.
4. If there is the possibility of a little more time and patience, then the mincemeat in the vessel can be placed in a warm place: near a hot battery or over a heated oven. Meat will defrost more slowly than in previous cases, but is more likely to retain its palatability.
5. A good option for quick defrosting can be running water. To do this, you need to tightly wrap the minced meat in polyethylene so that moisture does not penetrate inside, and it does not become very liquid. Leave a bag of meat under a tap with cool water pouring for 15-20 minutes. Check the package periodically for integrity.

Useful Tips

1. Of course, resorting to such emergency measures, it should be understood that they can ruin the product. Therefore, when doing any of the proposed manipulations, do not be distracted by anything else. Be careful, otherwise there will be nothing to cook from.
2. If after a quick defrost you feel an unpleasant smell from the meat or if it has become unpresentable (it has leaked or has become too colorless), in no case do not start cooking from such a product! You run the risk of severe food poisoning.
3. The most ideal defrost option is slow defrost. Therefore, always make sure that the minced meat is pulled out in advance, and you would not have to undergo strong heat treatment before you start cooking. Slow defrosting is a guarantee that the product will retain its taste and healthy properties.
4. To make the meat defrost faster, do this: divide the purchased piece of meat into such portions so that each is enough for exactly one cooking process. Arrange the resulting pieces into separate plastic bags and roll the rolling pin into a thin layer so that there is no air between the polyethylene and the meat. Tie and clean in the freezer. Then you will be convinced that the thin layer thawed many times faster than one large piece. And you will save yourself the need to freeze / thaw minced meat several times, which also affects its beneficial properties.

Quick defrosting is a good thing in emergency situations, but you should not use it constantly. Make sure that by the time you start cooking, the meat has already thawed. Use our tips to make your life easier!

Video: how to defrost meat